Italy

Italy

Author: International Monetary Fund. European Dept.

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2024-07-23

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13:

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Activity expanded by nearly 1 percent in 2023, with GDP surpassing its pre-pandemic level by 41⁄2 percent. Headline inflation fell on the drop in energy prices, with core inflation also moderating. Employment rose alongside real activity. Financial conditions have eased somewhat but remain tight. Despite fiscal deficits much larger than pre-COVID, the public debt ratio declined on deferred recording of tax credits and strong nominal GDP growth. Sovereign debt risks are moderate overall, but high at the medium- and long-horizons. Low fertility and low female labor force participation foreshadow faster population and work force declines amid weak productivity growth.


Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy

Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy

Author: Giovanna Fullin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-17

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1000399176

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Walking around the commercial streets of New York, San Francisco, Milan, London, or Paris and looking at the succession of multinational chain stores’ windows, you can easily forget what country you are in. However, if you hear the small talk among the employees, you hear very different stories. In New York, a 30-year-old woman is worried because she does not know if she will work enough hours to make a living the following week—whereas, in Milan, a mother of the same age knows she will work 20 hours a week but is concerned about whether her contract will be renewed at the end of the following month. Following three years of fieldwork, which included 100 in-depth interviews with front-line retail workers and unionists in New York City and Milan, Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy investigates both the lived experiences of salespersons in the "fast fashion" industry—a retail sector made of large chains of stores selling fashion garments at low prices—and the possibilities of collective action and structured forms of resistance to these global trends. In the face of economic globalization and vigorous managerial efforts to minimize labor costs and to standardize the retail experience, mass fashion workers’ stories tell us how strong the pressure toward work devaluation in low-skilled service sectors can be, and how devastating its effects are on the workers themselves.


The World in a City

The World in a City

Author: Paul Anisef

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 9780802084361

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Toronto is perhaps the most multicultural city in the world. The process of settlement and integration in modern-day Toronto is, however, more difficult for recent immigrants than it was for those newcomers arriving in previous decades. Many challenges face newly settled immigrants, top among them access to healthcare, education, employment, housing, and other economic and community services. The concept of social exclusion opens up promising ways to analyze the various challenges facing newcomers and The World in a City explores Toronto's ability to sustain a civic society. This collection of essays highlights why the need to pay more attention to certain at-risk groups, and the importance of adapting policy to fit the changing settlement and clustering patterns of newcomers is of crucial importance. The authors' findings demonstrate that there are many obstacles to providing opportunity for immigrants, low resource bases in particular. Toronto, they suggest, does not provide a level 'playing field' for its newly arrived inhabitants, and, in failing to recognize the particular needs of new communities, fails to ensure a growth that would be of immense benefit to the city as a whole.


Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life

Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life

Author: Maria Kontos

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-23

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1137323558

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This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.


The Silver Economy

The Silver Economy

Author: Agata Niemczyk

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-23

Total Pages: 99

ISBN-13: 1000984672

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The definition of “old” has evolved intensively over the years due to demographic changes, and the ageing population is one of the most frequently discussed issues in recent decades. The profile of the 21st century senior is completely different from the senior in the second half of the 21st-century senior is completely different from the senior in the second half of the 20th century, not to mention earlier periods in history. As an increasing group of benefactors of human activity, they create demand for products and experiences. The system of goods and services that aims to leverage their purchasing potential and satisfy their consumption needs, including living, health, tourism, cultural, information, and communication needs, has been referred to as the so-called Silver Economy. The book reviews the phenomenon of ageing of the EU’s population over 50. It also presents a multidimensional view of the potential for the development of this group’s economic, social, medical, family, personal and technological demand in the early 21st century. The book analyses the market behaviour of seniors and argues that the Silver Economy will grow in importance and profitability every year in various areas, both public and private. This includes health, finance, employment, leisure and well-being, education, and the use of digital tools. This publication is recommended for policymakers and business players who are considering how to achieve economic development through the growing and changing demand of the ageing population. For the world is now facing a challenge that no community has ever faced before – the coexistence of a long-lived population on the one hand and the growing popularity of digital technologies on the other.


Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies

Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies

Author: Gosta Esping-Andersen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 1999-02-26

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0191524948

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The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe the the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second, more sociological and more institutional, look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What, as a result, stands out is postindustrial diversity, not convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge, and to how evolving tradeoffs will be managed. Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that, now, are invalid. Hence, to better grasp what drives today's economy, we must begin with its social foundations.


Poverty in Italy

Poverty in Italy

Author: Chiara Saraceno

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2020-09-02

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1447352238

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Three experienced Italian sociologists explore the structural and cultural dimensions of poverty in their country. Comparing Italy’s regime with other European countries, they consider the interplay of conditions in the labour market, the family and welfare arrangements as causes of poverty. This in-depth analysis explores how forced familialism, unbalanced gender arrangements, territorial cleavages and sluggish growth have rendered Italy vulnerable to financial crisis. As old risks of poverty have worsened, new risks have emerged and children, the working poor and migrants have become the ‘new poor’. Combining theoretical and empirical tools, this is a topical fresh take on the understanding of poverty in Italy that is even more crucial considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


Reinventing Free Labor

Reinventing Free Labor

Author: Gunther Peck

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-05-22

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780521778190

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One of the most infamous villains in North America during the Progressive Era was the padrone, a mafia-like immigrant boss who allegedly enslaved his compatriots and kept them uncivilized, unmanly, and unfree. In this history of the padrone, first published in 2000, Gunther Peck analyzes the figure's deep cultural resonance by examining the lives of three padrones and the workers they imported to North America. He argues that the padrones were not primitive men but rather thoroughly modern entrepreneurs who used corporations, the labour contract, and the right to quit to create far-flung coercive networks. Drawing on Greek, Spanish, and Italian language sources, Peck analyzes how immigrant workers emancipated themselves using the tools of padrone power to their own advantage.


Soft Soil, Black Grapes

Soft Soil, Black Grapes

Author: Simone Cinotto

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-11-12

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0814790313

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Winner of the 2013 New York Book Show Award in Scholarly/Professional Book Design From Ernest and Julio Gallo to Francis Ford Coppola, Italians have shaped the history of California wine. More than any other group, Italian immigrants and their families have made California viticulture one of America’s most distinctive and vibrant achievements, from boutique vineyards in the Sonoma hills to the massive industrial wineries of the Central Valley. But how did a small group of nineteenth-century immigrants plant the roots that flourished into a world-class industry? Was there something particularly “Italian” in their success? In this fresh, fascinating account of the ethnic origins of California wine, Simone Cinotto rewrites a century-old triumphalist story. He demonstrates that these Italian visionaries were not skilled winemakers transplanting an immemorial agricultural tradition, even if California did resemble the rolling Italian countryside of their native Piedmont. Instead, Cinotto argues that it was the wine-makers’ access to “social capital,” or the ethnic and familial ties that bound them to their rich wine-growing heritage, and not financial leverage or direct enological experience, that enabled them to develop such a successful and influential wine business. Focusing on some of the most important names in wine history—particularly Pietro Carlo Rossi, Secondo Guasti, and the Gallos—he chronicles a story driven by ambition and creativity but realized in a complicated tangle of immigrant entrepreneurship, class struggle, racial inequality, and a new world of consumer culture. Skillfully blending regional, social, and immigration history, Soft Soil, Black Grapes takes us on an original journey into the cultural construction of ethnic economies and markets, the social dynamics of American race, and the fully transnational history of American wine.